If a man beget an hundred children, and live many years, so that the days of his years be many, and his soul be not filled with good, and also that he have no burial; I say, that an untimely birth is better than he.

Moreover he hath not seen the sun, nor known any thing: this hath more rest than the other.

Because it shut not up the doors of my mother's womb, nor hid sorrow from mine eyes.

Why did the knees prevent me? or why the breasts that I should suck?

With kings and counsellors of the earth, which built desolate places for themselves;

Or as an hidden untimely birth I had not been; as infants which never saw light.

Wherefore then hast thou brought me forth out of the womb? Oh that I had given up the ghost, and no eye had seen me!

I should have been as though I had not been; I should have been carried from the womb to the grave.

Because he slew me not from the womb; or that my mother might have been my grave, and her womb to be always great with me.

Wherefore came I forth out of the womb to see labour and sorrow, that my days should be consumed with shame?

And woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days!

For, behold, the days are coming, in the which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the paps which never gave suck.

I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.

Therefore I hated life; because the work that is wrought under the sun is grievous unto me: for all is vanity and vexation of spirit.

And I said, Oh that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly away, and be at rest.

I would hasten my escape from the windy storm and tempest.

Day and night they go about it upon the walls thereof: mischief also and sorrow are in the midst of it.

Oh that I had in the wilderness a lodging place of wayfaring men; that I might leave my people, and go from them! for they be all adulterers, an assembly of treacherous men.

And they bend their tongues like their bow for lies: but they are not valiant for the truth upon the earth; for they proceed from evil to evil, and they know not me, saith the LORD.